The Queen's Gambit: A SHIELD Codex Halloween
by KhamanV
Summary: Long ago, Odin All-Father buried the secret of his first two children. Baldur, who tragically never left his crib, and Hela, who rose to power under a deadly shadow. Now an exile on the world that gave her its name, Hela hatefully waits for a freedom she suspects will never come - only to find that a visitor has somehow arrived after all.
1. Chapter 1

(Like past Halloween collections (although this one doesn't mention the holiday itself directly), this Codex fic is a small set of stories under the umbrella of a larger one, in this case, stories of Hela's life, and stories of Death Herself. Because of that, these stories talk about issues of death in a relatively frank way. While there is no major gore or violence, or major character death, death is naturally the core topic. Chapter 2 will show Hela at war, though without gore. Chapter 3 will discuss an alien view of assisted suicide.

While the story is ultimately meant to talk about the value of life and change, and is gently written by someone that has Very Frank Issues and fears with the topic herself, please bear in mind your own comfort, and if you ever want someone to talk to, I'm here, and for god's sake, I love you and don't lose yourself to despair.

There is also a less than serious philosophical warning in play as I'm dragging out some of my own fears and using these characters to talk about them, so, yeah.)

The Queen's Gambit: A SHIELD Codex Halloween

_I have been for a long time at your side_. ~ The Seventh Seal

. . .

1\. Final Destination

The desert plains of Helheim were a dusty off-white, a grainy soup filling the cauldrons formed by the black stone mountain ranges that honeycombed the small, mostly empty world. Wind spun the sand up into smooth dunes that recalled echoes of the bodies that fell here - a dune like a shard of hip bone, jutting up against a spearlike scrap of obsidian, there the smooth cabochon of some massive skull. And why not, for that off-white sand was the remains of eons of bones lost in a world too dry and violent for gentler decomposition.

There were oases pockmarking the world, places where water gone red from algae and stagnation were still relatively safe enough for its residents to drink. Too fetid to be miracles, they were better described as places to ensure a life was lived in punishment alone. Mostly it served those hardy, eternal bugs that picked new bones clean, and the worms that burrowed back deep into hidden soil, and tough, cactus-like plants that looked like rotting fingers and flowered only once a century, at deepest night. And one humanoid figure.

It rained only occasionally on Helheim. Its silent Queen had witnessed this three times during her reign thus far. She thought she might finally go mad before the fourth. Hela, the mad queen of Death. It had a certain poetry to it, a finality of self. Certainly there had been those who thought her mad before her exile to this place, her prison, her kingdom, her entire world.

She preferred to stay near what she thought of as the Valkyrian Plains, although to say there was something of nostalgia to this would gain the questioner a hiss and a slap meant to kill. The sand here held bones not yet quite lost to time and predator, and the feathers of long-gone Pegasus cavalry still fluttered dustily in the pits of the stained stones. It made for a fine enough place to consider her throne and palace, a shadow in the lee of a great stone wall where she had long ago taken the bones of some long ago beast and dead man's steel and built herself a shelter to withstand centuries in noble privacy. Its tattered curtains rattled in the rare breeze, and that morning she flung them aside with the same practiced irritation that marked almost every other morning.

There was a bucket in her other hand, hammered together from some ancient Alfheim shield. There was a unicorn painted on it, or had been, once. She barely recalled. Now flecks of white paint threatened to leave as she gripped its haphazardly curled lip. It was a water day, as marked by a mental schedule that kept her busy and sane, and the things that preyed at the nearest oasis knew not to trouble her. She traveled there and back like a machine, knowing the path her boots scuffled through the bone sand would disappear instantly, whether there was wind to stir it or not. It was the way of Helheim, a world meant to be an oubliette. One only went there to forget, or to be forgotten. As all dead things eventually were.

Her magics kept her vital enough, pulling protein from what few things lived there, culling energy from scant light and the other rare things that came there to die. She supposed she was a little like a vampire herself, now, though she thought such undead legends were a monstrous mockery of the perfect silence of death itself. Another crime against her, or better described as punishment. Depending on the point of view, she might haughtily allow.

Anger was her only lasting companion, a seething but consistent shadow that stood closest to her when the veils between the Nine Realms went thin and she saw glimpses of the universe without her. It had been a day like that where she had seen a little boy in the Asgardian woods and did her best to choke the life out of him, magic calling old helpers to her side to frighten and help wound him. She hadn't even fully understood why then, why she'd almost killed what she later realized was another prince to replace her - just that she _hated_.

She thought of that child's face now and then. It was oddly like hers, and that had helped drive her anger. Pale with grey-green eyes, and under the skin she'd sensed the secret of him. In his terror it had been hard to hide the cold energy that pulsed along his soul, trying to keep him alive. An adoptee, then. _Chosen_ to replace her, and in the distance somewhere was a sleeping boy that looked like what she dreamed Baldur, her lost elder brother, might one day have become.

That had been the worst part of it. Not that the boy was taken from that enemy race, it fit Odin's ridiculous treason against the nature of both father and noble daughter, but that he had finally unseated her so neatly in the family tree. The child had even worn a tunic cut from the dark green Elvish fabrics she'd favored once. She hated him, that little prince, but more than that, she hated Odin for what he'd done to them all. But she spent little time thinking about these greater things, Hela told herself. Odin was not worth the focus.

Of course, that was a lie.

. . .

Hela noticed the unusual shadow out of the corner of her eye, but assumed at first it was some mirage or a flicker from the occasional swarm of bone mites. She had quickly learned to ignore the hope of visitors, for they were always revealed as such lies. Whatever wars had ravaged this world had been long ago. Her exile had been the last such skirmish. Only silence since. Silence and slow death. So she ignored the shape and stepped back into her shelter with that brackish, lukewarm water. Magic would clean it the rest of the way, and she left the bucket aside. Breakfast was next, and she preferred the air for that, if stagnant and old. So she puttered a moment inside and then stepped back out.

She stopped with a cold, calculating frown. The shadow was still there. Stranger than that, the shadow had a person attached to it. She narrowed her eyes, giving the mirage or ghost or hallucination a forbidding stare, willing it to go away.

The figure was humanoid, like her, but smallish and brown skinned and the dark eyes were light and lively. She wore a dark blue wrap over her head in a way that was like nothing Hela had seen before, over a slim black dress that she supposed might be new Asgardian. "Hello," said the shade that was increasingly not an illusion.

Hela regarded the girl. The language was clear enough in her ears, by virtue of magic and the gifts of her birthright, but unusual. She considered what it told her. This was a human, perhaps? Such small and brief creatures had never been of much interest to her. A datapoint in books, as pointless as a children's fable about dancing mice. "You tread in strange and unwelcome lands."

The girl laughed, cheerful and lively. "Oh, Hela. Nothing about this dead and dry land would be strange to me." She cocked her head at the Queen of Helheim, who had once been named for it as a way of placating the dead that had gone before her - Hela, a gift meant for the lost. A superstition that had perhaps painted her future. "Does it not suit you? I wonder, then, what other questions you hold deep inside."

Something tightened in Hela's throat, and she didn't care for the sensation at all. It was not for her to feel fear, and yet something inside her reacted instinctively to the girl. "Who are you?"

"I am Death, Hela." The girl smiled, and Hela wondered if the visitor was mad. Something glinted in those dark eyes, cold and full of something she couldn't recognize, and for another moment, Hela wondered if she could possibly be telling the truth.

The fear threatened her again and she forced it down, summoning her old friend back to her side. She spat her words at the girl, hot. "Death, the child says. _I_ am the Queen of Death, for I am Hela, Queen of Asgard, Queen of Helheim, and I command the living and the damned with a crook of my finger."

The girl looked around them, a bemused expression on her lips. "I see no armies, Hela, and no kingdom that kneels to you, and your command over life and death is currently constrained to a limit of one singular soul." Another quick and cheerful smile. "Which isn't nothing, of course, by rights everyone holds that one and it's worth cherishing."

"You're a madwoman, lost somehow in the currents of the universe, and found your way here to die." Hela sniffed and began to turn away. She would eat inside, after all. "I won't be caring for you. There's food if you can bear it, and water if you can cleanse it. I will not be sharing my shelter. Good luck."

"Oh, I thought it was meant to be your palace. Queens and all."

"If you'd care to mock me, mad girl, I can make your stay on this world vastly more pleasant - by shortening it to _seconds_." Hela didn't turn around as she made her threat.

"It was not meant as an insult," said the girl, her voice clipping merrily through some unknown accent. "Palaces are what we make of them, and their real treasures we keep close inside. Inside that little lean-to - you did well on it, not that you want my praise - are your memories and dreams, Hela. Your past. Your stories. And your mistakes. I wanted to talk to you about them."

"They're not yours, child. Go away."

"I've never left, Hela. I was with you when you were small." The irreverent voice turned somber and melodic both. "I was there when your whole world was warm and dark, and the last whispers of your brother's soul danced for a while with you. You still dream of him. The prince that never was, not really. Brief lives all, and his, so much briefer than most."

Hela's body had gone stiff despite herself, her hands curled like claws against the scraps of plant matter that passed for a haphazard flatbread. Her voice came out ragged with tangible fury. "Tell me again you do not mock, little thing. Do tell me your lies, _please_."

"I never lie, young one. Look at me. Look and see."

Hela felt the presence change behind her, felt something great and terrible and final, like a shadow cast across the dark side of some broken moon, and that fear threatened to scrabble against her throat. Again she grasped at her old, angry shade and forced herself to turn, to look at this mad little human child, and she saw.

Oh, gods and stars, she _saw_.

"_I am_," said Death, and she was still the smallish human woman, still in a black dress with what Hela did not know was a hijab draped prettily over her brow, but the face, Hela stared, the face was something grand and immortal. In the eyes was the mystery, on the curved, smiling lips was the secret. The light seemed to gleam through the girl's brown skin and for a second Hela saw a wall of skulls, all of whom would never speak of what they knew. Behind that face was the door to eternity, and one hand was raised, as if to beckon her across that final threshold.

For a second Hela saw _them_. Helheim was a world as if in stasis, and its brief lives were those of worms and bugs and strange, hidden things that lived deep under the bone-sands, but Death was everywhere all at once, and as her hand reached out, millions of souls stretched back to take it. A rush of finality, wrapped around her like a dance of veils, and on that mouth was that smile that said nothing, gave away nothing. What Death knew, said that smile, Hela could never understand.

Fury and fear warred within her, tempered by shame. How could she claim dominion over this? And yet - the hate and anger burned alive within her. "So. Perhaps you are Death, after all," said Hela, curt, as if she had not been staggered to the core of herself.

The presence waned, if slightly. Death searched her face, the eyes human and amused again. "You work to sound unimpressed. Your moment is at hand, Hela. Wouldn't you take this chance to challenge me for the title you believe is due yourself?"

"There's a trap. A ruler who begs and champs for their crown will be no fit ruler."

"I didn't suggest beggary, I suggested that since you have wanted to lay claim to Death's dominion, that you have styled yourself Queen in my name, your time stands before you."

Hela swept a hand to indicate the dead world around them. "A fitting kingdom for a fitting ruler. I am just and merciful here." She smiled without it reaching her eyes. "But the souls of the dead will not come to my hand the way they did yours."

"No, Hela." The voice of Death turned quiet. "You reached out to take them, instead." Death lifted her chin, still engaging in her piercing study of the exile Queen. "Tell me. Is that what you think our role is? The dance of death and nothing more?"

"Ours?" Hela laughed. "Do you tempt me with a shared throne?"

"On the assumption that, as you are now, you would one day attempt to claim it all? Not really. I am _playing along_, Hela, and you may feel as amused or insulted by that as you see fit." Death's study of her ended, and she looked towards a spire of bone instead, some long ago mystery turned nameless landmark, all but uninterested now. Her voice had taken on an air of coolness. "In the end it wouldn't matter much to me."

"So you came to toy with me." Hela snorted, crossing her arms against herself, her posture one of dismissal. "Have you nothing better to do?"

"I came, young Queen, to ready a debt's payment. To offer a bargain." Death sniffed, mostly to herself. "I pay mine willingly, and this one's been long waiting for its turn. Another such receipt has come due and been paid well, and that is the moment I waited for. To turn an hourglass of my own into motion."

"A debt. To me." Hela sounded disbelieving, ignoring the jibe despite the urge to let that sense of insult strike bone deep. There might be another trap there. One did not play with immortals without care, and Hela, much to her dismay, fully believed the girl now. This was indeed one of those first great eternal forces, there at the birth of this universe, the one who would one day officiate over its disintegration.

Death laughed. "Not to you. I owe you nothing, Hela. I am _granting_ you my time on behalf of another's future. You have not yet earned my kindness. You brought me souls unending, for their loss served your benefit and no other. You acted without thought for life, only death. Is that what Death is to you?

"Think carefully on that question and do not speak an answer yet. The game is at hand, Hela, and you _will_ play a round with me. What will be won is my secret, what will be lost is everything. No debts between us, Hela, but at offering is the bargain. The game, Hela. Will you play, or be played?"

Hela stared at immortal Death, unsure for the first time in a millennia. "And what is our game? I ask the nature of the board and the boundary of its rules before I can answer."

"A game of you, Hela. The game of stories. Tell me yours and I'll tell you mine. The score will be kept by truth, the goal is an understanding. I'll make it fair, Hela. For you to win, I won't ask you to understand the indicia of eternity, the basal nature of my role in the universe. I will grade you on a simpler scale, and I will tell you fairly if you win. It is to my benefit that you win, Hela, even moreso than it is to your own."

Hela shook her head with a bitter laugh. "Immortals speak in riddles but talk about fairness."

"Parse my words as long as you like, they're clear enough with no traps held within them." Death looked around and found a stone to sit on as Hela continued to stare soundlessly at her, her black dress pooling around brown sandaled feet. She clasped her hands on her lap and took a breath. "Once alone I will repeat: We are going to tell each other the story of life, Hela, and about death, and they will be our stories. The game is to try and understand each other. I will understand you, surely, when such few scraps of your tale is told. To win, you will answer my waiting question when I have told you mine. What is death, and Death, to you? The answer you hold now may not be the same answer you give when we are done. Or perhaps it will not change. We will see."

"And to win, you seek the right answer from me."

"No, I seek a _truthful_ one. The difference is slight but crucial. Perhaps you will understand when our cards are laid bare on the table." Death's smile returned, faint but genuine. "For my sake, you'd better."

"Then I've no choice but to play along." Hela still didn't move, didn't look to take a seat of her own. Her meal went forgotten. "You want a tale from me, then."

"I do." Death smiled. "Begin at the beginning. Or the end. Or at the place that is both."

"Another riddle."

"Is it?" Death cocked her head. "Interesting that you think so." She gestured to another rock formation nearby, this one worn smooth along its top. Hela's throne, there to study distant stars faded by the eternally gloomy skies. After a moment, Hela claimed it. Her eyes never left Death's.

"Let us begin," said Death. "The board is yours."


	2. Chapter 2

2\. Pale Rider

. . .

It is often assumed that when a child says they remember the womb, that they are simply remembering a dream they had when their brains were even less formed than they are now. The womb-dream is dark and warm, and sometimes a spark is recalled, like they knew their mother's presence, and the mother was equally aware and connected with their child, is what the child might describe. A place between, where souls are readying for the world.

Frigga believed Hela the first time her daughter told her this story. Hela was three at that time, still babyfat and precocious, and possessed of some solemn hardness that had made the healers worry at her at first. Hela didn't speak easily as a baby, skipping most coos and cries. She had been quiet, sleeping heavily through the days. At night, the nurses would check on the child and find she was awake, and though they thought it unlikely to be true, her eyes were strong enough yet and her mind surely couldn't be aware, she always seemed to be looking at the stars. Her first word was 'father,' lisped clearly through gums and a curiously early tooth, and the second, not a minute later, was 'mother.'

"There were three of us sometimes, in the dark. You and me and the other one." said Hela, still with a child's lisp, but with her tiny mind already lively and sharp. Her small hands were picking at Frigga's embroidery needles, not pulling them free, only dancing along their smooth silver lengths. "The other one was so small and faded, like most of him had left too early."

Frigga was not working on her tapestry any longer. Her hands were on her lap, lengths of blue and black string meant to shape the sky over Asgard some long ago eve threatening to slide off to the ground. She didn't notice them. She studied her daughter's face not only with her eyes, but with a witch's trained instinct.

"It was a boy," said Hela, seemingly not aware of the stricken look on her mother's face. "I tried to touch him, but I wasn't really real yet. I had to watch him go. I was alone in there a lot, except when you reached for me. You reached for him, too, but like a dream. He wasn't really there for you."

Frigga came back to herself, understanding the truth in her daughter's words. She made sure her hand was warm, and she reached out to put her palm on Hela's head, stroking the fine black hair from the girl's milky high brow. A strange but lovely child. A witchblood child - there _were_ darkhaired girls in Frigga's family, but hadn't been any new ones born for generations, and Odin's lineage were all strawhaired warriors that rarely tended towards ginger. "I reached for you often, my daughter. Time stretches there, an unreal thing in that special place."

"What was his name?" Hela looked up, saw the tears held fast at Frigga's eyes. She cocked her head curiously, but her eyes never left her mother's. She saw the tears were not for her, but for the ghost that never seemed to leave the shadows of her face. "He was supposed to be my brother. My big brother."

"His name was Baldur," said Frigga, the name in the air for the first time in what felt like forever, and it tasted like a razor blade on her tongue. Baldur, the firstborn prince, who had lived too short a time, and passed from his crib like a whisper. She could say nothing more.

Hela watched the torment that crossed her mother's face, and saw it as something more real than the faded way Frigga reached for her.

. . .

Hela paused, watching the way the scattered light caught on the dull sand instead of looking at the immortal. There were rainbows on Helheim after all, and the surprise of that realization struck her silent. Among the sandy bone was enough mineral and stone to form something like mica, and looking, for the first time, at what lay at her feet found what had been hidden in the dead world. She spoke again after a minute. "I did not tell Mother all of what I knew from the womb. I didn't tell her what I truly sensed."

Death said nothing to goad her on. Either Hela would speak, or she would not. The choice was hers.

"Her spirit oft reached for Baldur as I grew inside. Not me. Grasping for what was lost, and I was right there, all along, reaching back and finding no purchase." Hela reached down to cup a sparse handful of sand in her palm, letting it spread so that she summoned that new spray of color. Blue, she saw, and new green, and a flashing yellow. She had thought of herself as all but colorblind for centuries. "I understand, I suppose, that these flailings were likely when she slept, and these pieces of herself dug through the darkness for the lost child. An instinct, borne of grief alone. She did reach for me other times. Perhaps as often as she thought, from her point of view."

"It does not change what is felt," said Death, neutral here, seeing the boundaries of all that went unsaid. The pain. The sensation of being missed, in favor of something that could not be touched.

"No. I chose my words well. I always did, then. And I chose Father. Mother loved me, but she was… frightened of us." Hela pursed her lips. "Of you. She was a woman of life, and after I was born, there might be no other. I sensed that, too." Hela let the sand fall from her hand and stared at Death. "We were robbed of a prince. But _I_ was still there.

"When I was nine, I had begun my letters and was meant to start a lady's education. I would take my books - Mother wanted me to learn spells, so I did, over time, but that is nothing that interests me to speak of - and I would go to the windows and watch the boys. I learned their routines. And one morning, my head shorn close with a knife I stole from my nurse and dressed like any other child, I slipped down and stood among them, waiting for my turn to learn a true blade. Oh, they would give me daggers, if I liked, when I was older. But we needed Asgard's future sooner than that, I reckoned. And there was only I to carry it."

Death stared back. Watching, listening. Her face was empty now, wearing a young human face like a mask.

"The weaponsmaster was furious but could not lash out against me. Privilege as armor of my own. Each training day he would summon the nurse, who had wept so the first time when she saw what I had done to my hair, and each training day I would find my way back to the ring to try to learn." Hela's eyes lidded, feeling the memory as if it were new. "One day I pulled a sword from the racks and charged at him. I was crying, but they were hot and equally as furious as he. He slapped my blade aside easily, and that only made me angrier yet. I screamed at him, a scream meant to be a royal howl but came out like the fitful tantrum of a little girl. I suppose that's fair, but it enraged me further, and further. 'Teach me to kill you properly, then!' He took the blade away. Just as easily.

"It was Father that came down to collect me that day. Not the nurse. Father might have punished me where the others couldn't, but he didn't. I thought that curious, as if perhaps I had won something. Instead he gave me a book of tactics and sent me back to my lessons. But what he said was useful enough for a frustrated princess. 'Make a blade of your mind, first. Win _that_ duel, and mayhap then you'll gain the sword.'" Hela snorted. "I sat at one of his war councils when I was seventeen. I _won_ my place there, just as he told me to do. Not with a sword. Not then, not yet. With a battle plan I drew up based on the ancient King Ragnar's River-Stand. "

"Against the Kronan."

"Marauders, a mixed crew with that stony Kronan core, but yes. They band together every few centuries and pick at the fringes of one of our realms, trying to gain some toehold for further incursions." Hela waved a hand, dismissive. "Brute forces, in more ways than one. Their numbers were good, then. Good enough to concern certain of Father's usual council. _I_ found a way to bottleneck them, there at Vanaheim's High Eastern Pass. A dangerous river and a canyon walling it all off. Risky to station our forces, but safer than their choice to struggle through it, to settle their tents against its shadow. No retreat for them, but then, they wouldn't lest there was no other choice. I told Father to let me ride out with them. To see the results of my plan." Hela lifted her chin, as if commanding that long ago force even now. "He permitted it. Perhaps he thought it would sober my taste for war. It did - but not in the way he assumed."

"You saw something."

"I saw our warriors ringed in glory. The marauders, a few of them tried to retreat after all, in cowardice. They drowned instead. Their tents were aflame, the smoke rising to redden the afternoon sky. It was a beautiful color." Hela's eyes closed, and she went terribly still. "In Asgard, each day is clear and pure. Slow time, slow change. If any change at all. I saw dozens of lives change in _seconds_. Wounded, gone, defeated. It didn't matter the outcome for them. I saw our men _alive_, vibrant in the moment. The risks, the blood, the moments of fear. They were something that didn't exist on our private paradise.

"I wanted that," said Hela, her eyes still shut. "I wanted to live. Do you understand that, immortal Death?"

Death said nothing. She only looked at the exile, who was breathing shallowly at the memory.

"I wanted to _feel_ something." Hela opened her eyes and saw nothing in Death's face. "Father commanded the weaponsmaster to undertake my training the next week. I had bested his challenge, whatever he had considered of it. I chose my prize. The weapons of princes and kings were mine to learn."

"And so, Hela came to war," said Death, flat, like narrating some dusty text.

"You do not judge." Hela made the statement into a dagger instead of a question, digging around with the top for a reaction.

"I do not judge," said Death, giving her nothing. The mask didn't chip. "What was the next time you felt something, Hela? Something that made you feel alive?"

Hela laughed, small and bitter.

. . .

Asgard's wars had grown more seldom as its newest king continued the slow changes that would shape it for the next thousand years, but yet, it warred. All-Father Bor had kept the frost giants mostly in check, but a new alliance had formed from one of their royal houses, and from there, said their observers and spies, he had long since forged the splintered giant clans into a more cohesive army. Laufey, son of brutes and barbarians, was King of Jotunheim now, and the queen he'd quickly claimed for purposes of alliance with the gentler clans was either missing, imprisoned, or dead.

Frigga's informants suggested that of all those possibilities, the mysterious queen was a prisoner, with further hints that some of their more useful intel was coming from somewhere within her camp. Hela thought that interesting, if dimly so. The frost giants that went afield were not often deep creatures. They were immensely powerful, possessed of some fanatic loyalty to their hungry lord, and liked to fight to the gasping end. Perfect for her taste - she then spent many days with scout bands of Asgard's own, culling out stragglers and assassins long before they made their way to the hidden paths that let them range out from their frozen wastes. She made an art of it, and the first tales of Hela to reach the huddled giant villages were dark ones, of a skullish, grinning figure wreathed in blacks and greens, reaching out of the snow to claim their families.

Not as glorious or honorable as the stories the warrior men earned, but fear could be useful enough to Hela and she began to cultivate it, using it to make herself even more a fatal ghost that stalked the wastes. It backfired eventually, in a sense. Soon there were fewer giants that dared the distant reaches, meaning fewer hunts for her. But the legends of her grew, and where the bravest attempted, she ensured they served that tale.

Asgard's men had first acted as if servitude in her band was a curiosity that made for a sympathetic tale at the meadhalls, but as time went on and the word of what she could do with a sword and a giant's skull made her a leader to vie for when new blood was assigned to the field. These bloodthirsty ones became loyal to her, and she supposed, vaguely, that she felt an empathy with the warrior king of these frozen wastes. They served her because they found simple glory at her side.

But the light and life they found so easily eluded her. Some ghost she searched for stayed out of reach.

The hunts she went on were becoming increasingly uninteresting. Oh, her men loved them, to be sure, for they were permitted a pure form of war under her banner, but more and more battles became simple routs, with her presence enough to fear the opponent away.

Until the wolf-lords.

. . .

The battle itself had been brief and moderately stimulating, for once. A scout had signaled to Hela's band that he had found traces of a hidden encampment near the northern end of the region. Possibly and partially entrenched in a cave system for extra safety and warmth. That meant something new for her, frost giants with a firm place to stand and something worthy to fight for.

When she brought her warband to the edge of where the frosts had been melted and flattened into some form of control, the locals had boiled out at them. Dozens of jotun of varying sizes, mostly the mid-size and more agile warriors, and all of them _mounted_. Thick and armed and ferocious, like some battle-banner tapestry about the possibilities of War Itself.

Oh, she'd seen wolfriders before. They were scouts, typically, or a handful of hit and run warriors slipped among a hardier regiment. But _where_ these wolves were kept and trained, and how many more of them was possible, that was fresh material. That some of them could form warrior-bands of their own? Useful information. Hela was unaware of the wild and terrifying grin she had on her face at the sight of so many trained beasts snarling towards her and her men, and it stayed there as her handful of archers neatly struck down that first line of chargers. It stayed there when she waded into the fray herself, green coldfire enchantments arcing down the edges of her favorite sword.

The wolves were huge and stood firm when their riders were lost, snapping atop corpses to honor their freezing partners. She felt a twinge of pity as they were put down as well. Too trained to be useful for their purposes. Her men could take pelts if they liked - she permitted trophies, and these would be fine ones. What she wanted to know was further in.

Oh, there was much to record and sort. Not only a long-term stronghold, but one of a half dozen rare places where such beasts were kept and trained for jotun purposes. It was the kennels that caught her attention as the men went to work for the purposes of some distant and bloodless war council. The keening cries of dozens of hungry pups.

. . .

The kennel pups were small if measured from tip to tail, so long as one considered 'the length of a king's banquet table' small, and they were soft and furry. Hela stood there for a long while, entranced by the way they wriggled behind their fenced-in enclosures. A mother-wolf stood nearby, watching her with hungry fear.

One of her men said something to her. She ignored it, she had locked eyes with a pup whose eyes were a brilliant, beautiful green. It didn't seem afraid of her, its nose wrinkled with curiosity, catching the smell of blood in the air.

Another set of words missed as men clanged through huge boxes and their scraps of paper in the distance. She caught it, dimly. Kill the pups, then?

"No," she whispered, the green-eyed wolf smushing its face up against the pen's gate, a pink tongue lapping in her direction. She recognized it as a female. Like her, the rest of the pups shoved around her, uninterested in respecting her space. The wolf-riders only rode the males. The females were kept for future breeding. "Not these." _Not her_.

"Mercy, then, my princess?" There was humor in the Asgardian voice.

Her hand whipped around, as if of its own volition, and she gripped his throat tight enough for it to immediately begin to crackle. She was of Asgard's blood, and she had permitted Asgard's power to fuel her. Mother's magic was of some use, a weapon after all, and she would _never_ allow these easily driven men to overthrow her. "Mercy?" said Hela into the wide-eyed face, her voice cold. "You ask mercy of me?"

"M-m-mercy!" Begging her, now. Because that served her enemies so well.

Understandable but also useless, witless. Predictable. She felt the anger boil inside of her, the reminder that these warriors would never understand her, always think of her as some small creature that could be cajoled with, treated as never more than barely equal and that equality only because she forced it with a blade. She threw him across the room and his face looked grateful at her mercy. Until he realized, shocked still, she'd thrown him at the feet of the mother-wolf, who looked down at her meaty offering and then began to idly crunch away at him.

"Mercy, then," said Hela, no longer interested in the dying oaf and his quickly fading screams. An accident, she would say. Truthfully enough, by her reckoning. He _accidentally_ insulted the future Queen, and such things had consequences. In the day's fray, it would go without further questioning.

The dead aside, she stepped lightly towards the pen's door. It could be dangerous to release near a dozen hungry young wolves into the broad, warm cave where they were being raised, but she felt no danger here. These were natural creatures in the prime of their lives. They knew only hunger, and hunting, and warmth. They were trained using these things, and since she used similar to train her men, the wolves were understandable.

She let the pen door swing free, never feeling the frostbite chill of the steel under her hand, and when that green-eyed pup wiggled against her, licking her face in a curious frenzy, she smiled.

An honest one.

The first since she last touched her dead brother, who had sung to her in the womb before departing.

. . .

Of course, she named the wolf Fenris. Fenrir had been the steed of some long ago king, a name listed in myths that had filtered through the realms and become some dull legend. Fenris was nothing but dust.

_This_ wolf would bear only a Queen, and for a time, she found pleasure enough in the wolf's warm fur that she turned away from the warbands to tend the beast.

. . .

"She lies cold today," said Hela, thoughtfully. "Not dead, precisely. One of the few things I could do in the hours before my exile. She is part of me, my pup. She sleeps in the crypts, among the tombs of the men who died loyal to me. I suppose Mother allowed it, since I still feel my Fenris there. She could have unwound the spell between us, for she's the one that paved the way for me to learn it. But I saved her from my fate, and salvation holds. One day I will be free, and she will wake and run once more. Whether that freedom comes from my departure from here, or my death." She glanced at Death. "I expect no understanding of this."

"And yet, Hela, I do." Death fell silent again, clearly not intending to expound on that.

Hela narrowed her eyes at the young woman. "The only trophy I stole from the jotun. The only thing I kept from war."

"Do you know what the wolves mean to them?"

"I never cared. They were raised as weapons, near as I could tell. They fought us, we fought back. The other pups, I let them run free when we were done at the encampment. The men wondered at that, I saw, but didn't question me. I only wanted Fenris."

"And so you took her." Death leaned back, closing her eyes as if musing on something. "The wolves are Jotunheim's oldest emblem. Not just of their warriors, but of their people entire. To the farmers, they are icons of the cycle of hunt and harvest, to the shamans they are spiritual-"

"I said I never cared." It came out brittle, abrupt.

"A trophy means more when you know what you stole, even if you had meaning to it. Purpose." Death shrugged, then furthered it with a yawn. She ignore Hela's heated glare. "You've no wolf-mothers to throw me to, Hela."

"There's a corpse worm what lives under the bone sea to the west, it might make for an interesting attempt."

"The wolf was _life_ to you. The wolf represents something simpler, something real and full of emotion." Death reached out and wiped away a layer of dust that had built up on a stone next to her, as if she might have purpose for it. But she placed nothing down but her hand. "She had what you always sought. What you were chasing. But she's a wolf, Hela. What she understands, she cannot tell you in words you can hear."

"Oh, _don't_ give me these sappy monologues about life." Hela flapped her hand and rose from her stone, not quite starting to pace. "I'm not interested, particularly from a creature like you whose existence is the opposite."

"Is it? You understand me so well now." It was deadpanned. Death didn't look up. "Tell me more, Hela. Tell me how to understand _you_."

Hela snorted. "You were there, I'm sure. What would you like to hear? How my frustrations grew into a furnace when Odin declared our little war to be too much and demanded we draw back? That as I was growing up, he was already starting to grow old and had begun to consider peace? Some legacy he wanted to build, to soften Asgard's destiny. I suppose he worried his pretty princess might creak under the weight of what Asgard truly was."

"That's what you thought of his changes."

"Are they not some form of the truth, Death?" Hela lifted her chin, staring over the girl's head at the past splayed out before her. "Everything Asgard is, we took from somewhere else. The Aesir were a new race once, left to grow or die under the eyes of those that came before us. We grew. We survived. We _took_. We took first from Vanaheim, where the roots of our people sow deep, and we took their people to buttress our numbers, and back then we took their magic easily enough when it suited our purpose, and we took their villages to shelter us. We took Svartalfheim, and drove out their people, those dark elves that had once been honored servants to those precursors, there when the universe was younger. We took Niflheim's weapons, and chained their loyalties in time. A promise to protect them as we grew stronger. We took Alfheim's art and fabrics to swath ourselves, to play at being the Gods we knew we were destined to become. We took Midgard, because why not, and Muspelheim for their fire for our stolen Dwarven forges, leaving the scorch behind to feed on the magics we left, their original lords hidden deep."

She waved a hand around them. "We took Helheim as a cemetery for our enemies. As a prison for their futures.

"And we took Asgard itself from Jotunheim." Hela studied Death for a reaction that didn't come. She barreled on anyway. "Yes, I know the secret. There's a great chasm in the southern hemisphere of that world, a hole that drives near to the core of it. The hidden heart of why the frost giants hate us and why some might always hate us. And why not? We destroyed them, their histories, their role as one of the first great powers. They were the beloved children of those great old ones that watched over us and would have let us die in the cradle. And we _took_ from their world and made a paradise of it, our fields luxurious and alive, for under the ice it had slept and grown lush. Blood and stone fed it for millennia, and we stole and freed it for our use.

"And you begrudge me a _wolf_." Hela began to laugh, raucous and perhaps not entirely sane. "Odin wants to bury this all, and bury his own mistakes, and bury me, and _I_ hid a wolf out of sentiment and you come here and treat with me as if I am the sinner here."

"You did more than that," said Death, and now she sounded sorrowful. "Odin at least fights to understand his mistakes now."

"He didn't then," hissed Hela, acidic and hateful. "Only hid them. Hid them, Death, shoved them away." Her breath came ragged.

"Does the existence of one sinner absolve another?"

Hela froze at the question, delivered like a knife's point.

"Or must both carry their judgments? Hela, we cannot play 'what about?' Would you like someone to say that you were wronged? There are those that may say so. Yes, there are. And their feelings may be true. Have you done wrong? This is also true. Is all that you have done the responsibility of another, or must you consider at least some of your mistakes, your crimes as your own?"

Hela wrenched her gaze away, looking elsewhere. Her face was drawn and pale. "These are ridiculous philosophies that bear no relation to a life as it is lived. They are games for scholars and handwringers."

"But they are _true_, and I have witnessed their answers before. Like an echo, Hela. I chose to come to you because all this has happened before - and perhaps it may happen again."

Hela laughed and shook her head. "Irrelevant. Some life that has no meaning to mine."

"You're wrong, Hela. It is a life that may, one day, save yours." Death leaned back as Hela returned her attention to the girl, her hand still resting on that smooth stone. "A life you once almost took."

"I _almost_ took many, you'd need to be more specific." Hela watched the girl, finding no answer. Then she frowned, putting together nuance and tone and the gist of the game around them - thrones and families and blood. "Oh, ye gods, you _can't_ be speaking of that witless little child I nearly choked to death through the veils. The soft blue prince they stole to put in my place. Again, dear Death, I'd rather suggest I'm being pressured over a wolf when you might look elsewhere for faults to judge."

"Him."

Hela put up a hand and now she did began to pace back and forth across the sand. "I'm not interested in whatever ridiculousness the family's gotten up to, unless they're dead or dying."

"Odin is dying."

Hela stopped her pacing, and turned to look, cautiously, carefully, at Death. Silence held, for a minute or for an hour. "Then we've nothing to speak about, and I'll be free when he's gone." But she sounded uncertain.

Death looked back at her, making that uncertainty into something firm.

"Ah, _fuck_." Hela crossed her arms. "I did feel something a while back, come to think. They redid the binding." She looked up, thinking carefully again. "How could they have redone the binding? Did Mother-"

"Frigga has been dead some few years." The flat of the blade, slapped against skin.

Something changed in Hela's face, some small and undefined thing, like a crack under the surface of a porcelain cup. A flaw that lies dormant yet for dozens of uses, perhaps hundreds. Until the cup abruptly shatters.

For now, Hela's face held together. But the crack remained underneath.

"And the jotun Queen, whom you found so uninteresting once that you barely knew her name, helped Odin remake your bondage." Death cocked her head, watching these slow breaks inside Hela, marking them for later. "She does not hate, from where she sits upon her throne. She understands true mercy. And change. And, in some critical sense… me.

"The worlds have changed while you stayed here, Hela. They changed. You have not. The tale you tell me thus far says you chased something that hid within you. You armored yourself against it, understandably at first. That Asgard had not changed, and that it would dismiss a little girl as its Queen, that it would not respect you as it might have once done your elder brother. All this is fair.

"But as Odin realized change might be due in Asgard, it was you that resisted it first and hardest. _You_ that hard forged your war-band through blood and loyalty and sorcery, and then chained them even beyond my hand to serve only you, and instead of being the nightmare legend of Jotunheim, you went to slaughter your own people in revenge against this slight, attacked your father, and drove them to exile you here. Because you did not want to change with them.

"When it was _change_ you hunted all along."

"Ridiculous," said Hela, but her voice was bloodless. "A ridiculous charge."

"Then tell me what you truly sought." Death's eyes on the cracks, waiting. Not yet.

"No," said Hela, more firmly now. She turned back to her seat and crossed to it, settling herself with dangerous elegance. "No. I've said what I will for now. Small moments in time, that's all I'll give for you throw them back at me with these bitter accusations. Tell me your tale, Death, tell me what it is you think is so important for me to hear."

"Very well," said Death, amused, perfectly capable of patience, and then she began to speak.


	3. Chapter 3

3\. Mort(e)

. . .

"It is pointless, Hela, to describe where I began. I began with the universe. From nothing there came something, and then, everything. That is enough. We are not here to discuss cosmology or philosophy. We are here to tell each other a fraction of our stories.

"So listen instead to the first time I chose to make a bargain, the first hours I lived a mortal life, though that life, there in the early millennia of this universe, was not anything like those you might understand…"

. . .

The being called itself _Mort_ in its language, which was one of those strange little jokes the universe likes to carry along for a few billion years. French was not a thing here, and among these small, strange, almost indescribable but lively and scrappy people, the name meant, roughly, 'born sickly but of great and harmonic soul.' Mort was given the name in its seventh cycle, after responding to a childhood of medicine and prayer. Mort struggled daily to do its part to contribute to its colony, an agender race who lived peacefully in a part of the universe so different and distant as to be invisible to human minds, and now in its ninth cycle of life, it was still sickly, but also a critical part of the colony's early spacefaring.

They didn't go far, Mort's people. They had made it to their series of moons and a few other nearby spatial structures, and had a good map structure of the local stars. Mort wanted to do more - Mort could barely function on the surface due to the nature of its illnesses, but give it the intricate wheelset that made up their starstrider vehicles, and Mort was what a more relatable species would call a goddamn superstar. Being nomadic was not a concept these lost people understood, exactly, for them the pod was all and the pod was a family one did not abandon, but Mort felt it in its soul.

Mort met the strange presence on one of its last few 'normal' runs, a hauler trip where it went to the fringes of the nearby nebula and collected gases for use at the colony. Their encounters with other races had been scant - a couple traders who found the small race off-putting for their pale, furred, and long-limbed bodies, who spoke with each other in soft, sing-song clicks and hummed tunes.

The presence was limned in starlight, and it was shaped like Mort, but not quite rightly so, and it had appeared on the small vessel without any possible way for it to do so. Yet it was clearly not a mistake of Mort's jelly-like mind. :Hello,: it had clicked to him, in a vocal set that indicated neutral politeness.

Mort nodded back, if we may call it a nod, a quick, jerky motion that allowed its eyes to remain in place, set on the figure. The staring upset other species, ones that had followed more mammalian conventions and had things like eyelids instead of aqueous sacs that kept their eyes comfortable and alert. Mort was not aware their physiology was more fishlike and susceptible to gravitational pressures, which was why others like Mort had troubles as they evolved from the surface of their wet little world to the stars. It waited to see what else the mimicry being would do. Fighting never crossed Mort's mind. It was simply not a thing for their kind, bringing pain to one another.

:This-one has a request,: said the strange, silvery thing that looked vaguely like Mort's long-ago pod-birther.

Mort cocked its head and clicked its assent to continue. There was no harm in listening, and there was that thing that hungered inside it, that curiosity that looked deeper into the starlit void.

:Mort is not well. Mort never has been.:

Mort considered. It was not couched in the rare clicks of insult. :This-one is doing what this-one can,: it said instead, careful. :While this-one can.:

:Mort has not told their pod.:

A tremble ran through Mort's subcutaneous layer of skin, making the soft fur ripple. It knew, this being. It knew the way the aches had grown and dug deep into the light and airy bones, and it knew the furrows and ripples that the medic-pod had looked at Mort with at their last check-in. :This-one cannot,: said Mort, frightened now. :They/pod will take the stars from this-one.:

The being watched Mort, and their eyes seemed hidden in dark liquid, a rare and ominous thing among these lost ones. :They/pod won't have time,: said the being. :Other -_things/places/pods_\- are not well here.:

Mort cocked its head again, trying to parse. The word the being used was clearly not quite what it meant, but equally clearly there was no current word for it. The tone told Mort more. Not a threat, but a warning of some sort. :How can this-one save their pod?:

:Cannot,: said the being, dipping its head low in emotionless apology. :Cannot. But this-one has their request. This-one would walk with Mort, and understand what is to come. Mort will live so that Mort can learn a thing this-one needs, and Mort, in exchange, may be able to help _some_ of them/pod.:

:Some.:

:Only some,: said the being. :This-one cannot change what is. This-one observes.:

:What is this-one?: asked Mort, keening gently so it did not give offense with its question.

:This-one is _ending/ceasing/silence_.:

:Mort allowed its hands to ripple in the way that said it did not quite understand. Another place where they had no perfect word. :Silence?:

'Silence' cocked its head back at Mort, then allowed a nod, accepting the name. :Silence will come to colony no matter what, should Mort refuse this-one's request.:

:But if Silence comes with Mort?:

:Then Silence can bring something else with it.: Silence made a noise that sounded like nothing Mort had ever heard, but it was a kindly noise, and made Mort feel better simply hearing it.

Mort rubbed its cartilage-ridged fingers together, a bit like a mantis, thinking but thinking with less fear and more contentment. This was a gift to its curiosity, a moment where it did not think of how much it hurt to move, or how the wrists ached always, or how it felt the weight of the galaxy upon its too-slender shape. :Mort will agree. For sake of pod.:

:Touch,: said Silence, and Mort reached out to let its fingers entwine with it, and then, for a single glistening moment that then stretched into eternity… Mort understood all and would have wept for this new gift of _hope_ that Death did not yet understand it had shared.

. . .

A minute later and Mort felt much the same, though heavier somehow, and the aches that had plagued their life were faded and distant. Mort returned to the colony and went to sleep in the gel-huts. And slept. Poor Mort slept for days, as Silence, who was Death, explored the little mortal mind and then the world beyond it.

When Mort awoke, the disaster was already beginning. Those nebula-gases that were fueling the colony, those beautiful wisps of color, as these lost people saw them, were poisoning deep organic structures the colony relied on - and the danger had metastasized too quickly for the pod to understand, much less halt. Like a nuclear meltdown, they were past the point of no return, and the predictions of the final outcome were of the most dire song. They had weeks, at most. Twenty full turns of the moons, if they were fortunate. And such good fortune was not a safe bet.

So it was the cargo of ships like Mort that became the innocent cause of the death of their world, and Mort understood now, mournful and weeping in the gel-huts, why Silence had come to it for its bargain. It wept for three days, and on the morning of the fourth Mort lunged painfully from its hut and begged what few would listen to come with it. To abandon the colony and plunge into space for whatever better hope might lie there.

But the pod would split if they did so, they told Mort. The pod did not abandon each other, it was unthinkable. Mort quickly became the colony's first heretic, and its pod-kin keened as if for lost things when they saw Mort. Mort did not stop to keen back, instead they filled their ship with supplies and materials and pled with other starstrider pilots to do the same. Not many did. But a few, when the moons dipped and the colony was dark.

The colony died two weeks, or five turns from the start of the realization, unkind fortune after all. Mort was already in-flight, and was there to see the lights go out, to see the strange, slow billow of poison slip like a veil over the face of their world. But Mort was not alone. There were fifteen others aboard with them, and enough supplies for months, and the most precious cargo, the egg-urns that had already been blessed with impending life. Hundreds of potential offspring.

There were six other ships in orbit with Mort, watching the end, and they, too, carried life and lives.

And there was Silence, who now the people understood as Death, and Death felt the way the lost people keened for their dead, and how they keened again as they fled into the endless reaches of space, all to seek somewhere else to begin again.

. . .

"This, Hela, was how I first understood empathy." Death's hands were clasped on her lap. "Today I can feel the way Mort's soul stretched near to breaking inside them, as their podmates clung to them and sang for the way that world turned dead and empty, even as I can feel the pressure of the changing air as I set foot upon that world, reaching out to take countless millions of these people with me. I felt what they felt, and learned then what it meant not only to lose everything - but to fight for a chance to live.

"Mort survived another hundred cycles. Not long by our reckoning, but a good lifetime for them. I remained there, for that brief life, even as I continued to spread throughout the universe. I was content to watch with them as their search went on, though I was not often seen. They thought of me as a spirit within Mort that helped drive them through the dark, as a gentle prophet of the end. They built drones to search ahead of them, looking for a new home." Death smiled, softly. "They found one, Hela. Mort was fragile by then, and could not bear the pressures of that new world, but the newest of them adapted, and grew, and carried on. They live today. Still few, forever impossibly distant, a race that will never be whispered of in this region of space. But they live yet, after countless millennia, and through grand evolutionary changes.

"Mort stayed adrift, watching over them from above, and with their hands I wrote the first pages of what I suppose became something of a diary of mine. A curious little project, something I had never considered creating before. Creation, after all, was not supposed to be my specific purview, although I suppose things can change. And when Mort finally passed on, their strange but perfect hand now in mine, that book drifted deep into the dark, safely, in a drone of my own design."

Hela stared at her, wildly unimpressed.

Death flapped a hand, declining to roll her eyes at the flat-faced expression. "Empathy, Hela. Hope. They are things that matter."

"And you tell me of this through the eyes of a race so distant and odd that it is nigh meaningless to me." Hela did roll her eyes, if slightly. "I can barely picture them, small and strange."

"But you tried, and understood that they were in danger, and there was little they could do. And yet, some of them survived. Perhaps you felt some scrap of emotion for them. That empathy, and the hope it carried within. That is what lies on the other side of disaster… and death. That hope."

Hela yet looked unmoved. "If you like. Is that the tale you wanted to tell, or was there another? We've matched childhoods, after a fashion. Will you tell me of your coming to war, then?"

"I was there for the first war, the first time one life took another, and though it was first, it was, in the end, as painful and banal as so many such takings. A cost undefined, a future ended. Empathy, then, and hope, I've tried to describe, as a lesson. The next page of my diary, Hela, was mercy."

"Oh _good_," said Hela, witheringly.

Death studied the exiled princess, and her face became perfect British stone. A young voice snapped from her, relentlessly human and not a little tired. "You do rather enjoy being a lot to suffer, don't you?"

Hela blinked at the way Death's demeanor changed. "You-"

The girl - not Death now, oddly, but some young brown-skinned woman alive under the young, brown-skinned mask - snorted, snappish and brief. "Stow it, Hela, your family's peculiarities got common somewhere in the line, though it's learned and not genetic, we can be sure."

"Who are you again?"

"Death, and then sometimes not. Are you _really_ just catching up on that other bit from the tale of Mort?"

"You _are_ a human girl." Hela rose, that affront coming back, the idea that her time was being wasted. "As if I might-"

"As if you might write it up on a tough shite list and send it to a chaplain, Hela, I'm not one to care. Mort was a gentler soul, but _I've_ gotten a broad eyeful of the universe out of my bargain thus far, and you're not even the worst I've met this week. Death might not say so, they're usually a patient sort as fits, but Death and I do share a certain annoyance with pretension." Death - or rather, a human woman named Salima lifted her hand to cut Hela's next attack off. "Sit back down. Death's got more yet to say, and if I've got any vote here - and Hela, I _do_ \- mercy is going to be something you need to think a bit more about before you run off with your lips again."

Hela, not used to that much backtalk in a few millennia, particularly from what she fully regarded as a lesser being, blinked. "Say I humor you for now."

"Oh, what _honor_," said Salima-who-was-Death, and the cold distance retook her face. "So," said Death next, all the sardonicism and acid gone again. "Where were we?

"Ah, yes… the widow-maker."

. . .

Tyrbina came the bargain readily, for she was already old and felt some sympathy for Death. She had served as a healer to a humanoid people, Kawans, ones that held familiar legends of celestial gods who had forged their bloodlines, and she had some slight magic to her name. There was always business for a healer, though Tyrbina's place in the triage lines had long since drifted further away from the front.

Under her care were those who needed little else but a hand to hold as pain or mortality took a grip upon their wounded bodies, and who told her their secrets and begged for one more. The Kawans were a people who lived their lives at war, having abandoned their world as the Destroyer approached - some impossible being that, said the story, cast the galaxy entire into eclipse and consumed it all. No one knew for certain if this was true, but now they were nomads and mercenaries, drifting as one across the sector. They didn't do this because they thrived on the battlefield, but because they had never developed other ways to survive before they lost their world. They took to battle with grim purpose - to do their job, and to come home.

Many of them did not, especially of late, where they served as costly cannon fodder for some proxy war with vague goals and even more vague victories. But of those who did, they often ended up passing through the healer's ships on the way. Tyrbina's first daughter was in High Triage, where the wounds were dire but survival could be managed, and her second commanded a squad of irregulars that earned good coin for their subterfuges. There were no other children carrying her name. Not any longer.

Tyrbina found the strange presence in the herbarium, and examined it critically before saying anything. The figure looked like a Kawan, of course, but Tyrbina knew the veins and blood of her people more intimately than she had known her mate, and she saw the way the being did not breathe, and how no vein pulsed at the thin, dull neck. No iridescent sheen of life, and those strange, deep eyes that held nothing to read. She had seen enough, and she was rarely surprised any longer. "Whatever you've got, mistress, I'm not sure I'm fit to treat."

The presence laughed. "I am sick with nothing, for I exist beyond illness and pain."

"Ah," said Tyrbina, who had grown up with the tales. "You, then. Is it my time?"

Death looked Tyrbina over, a little taken aback with such casual acceptance. "Perhaps not. I've a matter to discuss, and a bargain to offer."

Tyrbina swept past Death to pick up a censer of water, treated as a holy rarity and given first to healers. As far down as she ranked now, her rations were little enough, but it was enough to feed her herbs and moisten the lips of those unfortunate enough to triage down to her. "I've time. Next shuttle is in an hour. Five on that one, I'm told. Must be bad at the front for so many to make it to me."

"And how many of them will travel on from your care?"

Tyrbina snorted, gently enough, and that was her answer.

Death watched as a set of succulents took rare sips, and then a flowerbed that could not be strictly ornamental - too costly to keep alive otherwise, on what Tyrbina rated - and some seedlings that meant a few rich grains for Tyrbina's own mouth. "What happens to those who do go home, so wounded they may never return to the front again?"

Tyrbina cast a glance over her shoulder, narrowed and speculative. "Death comes to me and asks questions of a mortal life?"

"Death comes, and asks what it will."

Tyrbina quirked a long eyebrow, one whose furs threatened to tickle her jutting temple. The questions were deliberately leading, but for her there were traps. "It's not a question I can answer, Mistress."

Death frowned, as if thoughtful. "The restrictions are that harsh here." Then the being lifted her chin. "The bargain is a simple one. Show me what you cannot speak of, so that I may understand why."

"Show you? I've no budget for assistants." Tyrbina gestured at her scant garden. "I starve myself to feed my patients, I can do little more. Not that I fear you or what's after, but I'd do my job as long as I may, if I might."

"It will be simpler than that, Tyrbina. Accept what I ask and your bones will creak a little less and your hunger will fade, for I'll carry your aches and pains. Your hands will be yours, and your soul, and I'll not interfere with what you do, but I'll see through your eyes and feel what you feel. Then, Tyrbina, we can talk plainly."

"Can Death feel, then? Understand what it is I do?"

"I've learned empathy, Tyrbina, once and many times over again." Death caught the probing look. "What the stories know and what I am are different things. From you I seek the start of my next lesson."

Tyrbina shrugged, pragmatic and calm. "And when you're done with your schooling and done with me?"

Death reached out to touch one of the strange flowers, whose petals shimmered sickly despite their vitality. It did not wither under her finger, if anything, it looked healthier yet. "We will test what I learn," she said, and Death looked up to see Tyrbina nod once in agreement.

. . .

Death watched through kindly old eyes as five wounded Kawans entered the healerie where Tyrbina did her work. Two were kept in medical comas, their wounds indescribable. Even so, Tyrbina stroked their foreheads with her soft palm, singing children's songs that she believed would soothe their dreams. These ones would pass by nightfall, naturally, under the scope of their injuries. It was Kawan law to see these deaths observed by those licensed, so the widowed mates would know some form of closure, and so that their contracts were legally ended.

The other three were alive, only asleep, and they were destined to wake in varying forms of agony. Their wounds were severe, their bodies unstable and weak, but the frontline healers could no long spare them attention. They passed through the other ships, examined, drugged, sutured, and sent on down the line.

The intent of healers like Tyrbina was to stabilize them enough to be sent back to war. Without enough bodies on the field or on the confirmed casualty list, the Kawan would violate the terms of their contract and not be paid. Thus, the Kawans would quickly starve out.

_A horror,_ said Death within, feeling what Tyrbina felt. _There are no other options here?_

"Recover enough to return to the field, or death. That is the battle-contract, and so it is our contract as healers. Each of us know when we sign the page, and each of us sign it anyway. What other choice is there for a people like us?" Tyrbina shook her head, not yet used to the way her crowded thoughts sounded inside her skull. Here she could say what she couldn't just a few hours ago, to illustrate what was seen. The laws could not chain her mind. "If we send them home, they'll go without a way to support their families, much less care for their wounds."

_And if they return to the front?_

"They'll stay until they finally die. Loaded into otherwise automated units that need only a living hand to control them, till either that hand falls into yours or the machine is destroyed and what remains of that hand falls into yours. Our engineers specialized quickly into these things." Tyrbina snorted, aloud but softly. "They had to choose. War machines, or new bactum tanks we could use to regenerate the wounded. They chose the machines, our leadership. The commandants, the ones who must toll the numbers and ensure our contracts are good. Terribly painstaking work, keeps them from their sacred duties afield."

Tyrbina used a cloth to dampen the lips of a shuddering young man as he awoke, whose limbs were too few in number. "They send surrogates bearing their name, for legal and contract purpose. The surrogates die, of course. Commandant Kirith d'Lar has died three hundred and twelve times in this engagement alone. I've tended near thirty of them myself. Six years worth of dying over and over. Amazingly, he sleeps at night all right. For a dead man."

Her thoughts were free, free, and they slipped harshly into Death's. "For a man dead inside, I'd rather say."

Death's thoughts fell silent, watching the young man continue to tremble, the pain all but unstoppable. She watched as the guards who accompanied the five wounded mercenaries kept their eyes off the bloody tables, and off the old woman passing between them. She watched as they finally left - the contract stated they must ensure safe delivery, and that the healerie was clean and still licensed, nothing more was needed. They left with expressions that said they prayed they would never return on a cheap cot, not like this.

In the silence after, Tyrbina worked. A little comfort, a little peace. And she waited, as if for something. Not death, for Death was already there in that room. And then, one of the three broke from a fever, and looked clear into Tyrbina's eyes. "You," he said, sounding hopeful and frightened all at once.

"Shh, Gorvas," she said, and took his hot, mangled hand in hers. "At your pace."

"How… how bad?" The mercenary, Gorvas, tried to lift his head to see his body, but she laid a hand on his forehead. Death felt the sweat bead under her palm, cold against the hot flesh.

"You're stable for now," said Tyrbina. "But there's been losses."

"The machines, then," said Gorvas, his eyes wetting as he understood now why he felt so little except pain.

"Mmm."

"I want to go home." He turned his head away. "I told my commander, I told him, if the charge went bad, I…"

Tyrbina took a cool cloth and laid it over his brow.

"I don't want to be in a machine. But my family…" The face came back, pale and grey under the faded iridescence of his skin. "You _are_ Tyrbina."

She shook her head. "The talk grows careless, soldier."

"The _front_ grows careless, the commanders haven't seen it in ages!" Whatever the mercenary was going to say next was lost in a throe of coughing, blood and other fluid spilling at the corner of his mouth. He groaned, and it was a long time before could speak again. "Who else?"

"Timash, and Iri'fyn. Two others, but they'll be at peace soon. Or the machines. They're stable, for what it's worth." And not much, said her tone, gentle but pragmatic.

"My regiment, then. I may speak for them." The words were guttural now, pained. "My medal-mark-"

"I see it on your papers. You speak for them." She laid the back of her hand against his other cheek, letting the coolness of her skin soothe him.

"Please, Tyrbina. Kawan deserves peace."

Death heard the coded words thrum against a hidden thing in Tyrbina's soul, a thing she now saw clear, and she stayed silent. She watched Tyrbina's hands take a couple of petals from the strange flowers, and put them in cool water, where the cameras that monitored her ship could not see. She watched as Tyrbina returned to Gorvas and the other two, singing to them while the gentle potion brewed, and she lifted their heads to pour just enough into each throat.

At twelfthwatch, Tyrbina noted the legal deaths of the five men who had been sent to her care. Her console beeped to let her know there would be time for a little sleep before the next shuttle came, and that one would hold only two deeply wounded soldiers. Only, thought Tybrina. Such a bitter word.

. . .

So Death watched as Tyrbina gave what mercy she could, over weeks of senseless war. She felt dozens of lives pass on painlessly, well away from the horror they had come from, and understood now that Tyrbina had chosen her own way to fight injustice, with a tool that was imperfect but kindly meant. Death also watched as packages came from widows who, through secret but increasingly careless talk, understood or at least tried to understand the complicated ethics here, and were thankful for Tyrbina's work. Soon another package came, a traceless package with a small book inside. That one was meant for Death's hands alone.

And Death watched, the chill growing in her hands, as that talk at last reached the wrong person. Kirith d'Lar came personally to Tyrbina, to accuse her of crimes against the Kawan race.

. . .

Death paused, remembering. "The nights before each phase of her trial, I wrote what I had seen, as I had during Mort's life. I wrote about the mercy Tybrina gave men and women whose lives had been destined for that more miserable end - as such ceaseless war gives as prizes - so that I would continue to remember, so that I would understand myself."

"And what purpose of that? You are a Power, you do as you will." Hela leaned back now, her arms crossed against herself. She listened, clearly intrigued if still playing at boredom.

"But by once questioning my power and my place, I gained a hint of what a mortal life must bear. Instead of turning from it, as some other Powers have done, I find it… useful." Death's eyes closed. "There are such things in the universe that carry horror and fear within them by their nature, always. I found I have the choice to be gentler about my work, and that I do not need fear to serve my duty."

"Hmm. And at the end of Tyrbina's trial?"

"The punishment was set. She was guilty, of course, and they meant to punish her." Death opened her eyes to look at Hela. "They were to send her to the machines."

Hela stared steadily back. "And you gently took her, instead. That was your test."

Death smiled, sad and rueful. "Close. Very close. It was one of the widows that opened Tyrbina's door to my realm. Tyrbina was permitted guests. It was assumed by the commanders that some widows would revile the one who murdered their mate, and let a few in to shout at her. But only a few did so, and one used a ploy to pass her a gift - dried petals of the deathblossom Tyrbina used. In return, I asked this one to take my book, and place it in a courier shuttle I had long since arranged.

"The guards found her dead in the morning. I watched, to know the end. In the night Tyrbina and I talked, her weary and in the last moments of doubt, and I assured her that her lesson was a fine and powerful one, and that she had acted in kindness, out of hate for war and the pain it gave. I would judge nothing more of it. She went peacefully, and the commanders… the commanders were furious.

"I was by then gone, and saw little else. But I may say that Kawan of that long ago era is dead, torn apart by those purchased wars with no useful outcome. The Kawanites that live now have an enclave of healers among them, descendants of the Blessed Widowmaker, who ply their trade and listen to what the patient needs - not what the faceless demand. They are a good people, and they remember their stories well."

Hela took that in, studying Death with glittering eyes. Behind them were the cracks still. Death watched those most of all, knowing the pressure that was building underneath them. "And this book of yours, that journal. Where else has it gone?"

Death shrugged. "It traveled to many places over many aeons, chronicling my lessons and sometimes becoming the only place a name is remembered. And then I lost it."

Hela leaned forward, a smile starting to play at her mouth. "You _lost_ your book."

"I did!" Death, not ashamed by a rare failing, let loose a laugh. "A mortal play gone awry, a ship's connection missed. It went deep into one sector as I made my next bargain in another. I lost track of it for thousands of years. A hassle, and perhaps a minor tragedy to some who found it. I spent a few joint lifetimes trying to place it, searching for where it had gone. Sometimes I spied pieces of its trail, where industrious souls managed to translate a page or two - a lifetime lost to all but my memory - and they would make religions of it. A strange effect I caused with a simple book. But I did find it again, after all."

"In good shape, I hope." She made sure she didn't sound like she cared, but still, there was a trace of some interest flickering in those eyes.

"Very! It had made its way into the most carefully kept archives of Omnipotence City, as one must figure all books might eventually land." Death watched Hela's reaction, the way she started at the name. All knew of the library that was a living city, and more, a world entire.

"Can't imagine they let you have it back easily, even if your name and sigil was writ within its binding."

"No, and I never expected they would. A priceless jewel of their vast collection. People came from all over the universe to try and pry my secrets from it." Death leaned forward, almost confidential. "I set a plan in motion, finding an interesting confluence building there. A life, a bargain as intended message to one of my great dislike, and one who would help me complete a heist. I _stole_ my journal back, Hela, spirited it free from under the noses of the Watchers and Guardians of the City." She watched Hela's eyebrow arch, underplaying her surprise at the almost impossible feat. "I had a little help, towards the end."

"One that helped would earn a rare favor from you, I'm sure."

"He _did_, actually, and I learned yet another interesting lesson from him. One about change, as I switched my path to follow his for a time. A change that was so unlikely as to be shaped a miracle, and yet it was accomplished. All from a boy who ought have died behind a frost giant's ruined temple, who once was nigh murdered by the elder sister of his adopted kin, and who, looking the inevitable in the face, took a chance and remade his life entire."

Hela went terribly, deathly still. The cracks under her skin widened, just a titch. "_Him_."

Death smiled. "We come to an interesting hour, Hela. Take a moment's peace. Center and think, however you like. And then, I am going to ask you my question again."

Hela snorted, rose, and stalked off a ways into the bone desert, her hands on her hips, and she did not look back at Death as the dim moon rose higher into the sky.


	4. Chapter 4

4\. Defending Your Life

. . .

"What is death and Death to you, Hela?" Death watched the exiled princess stalk towards her, watching the porcelain angles of her face shudder under the weight of the answer. Watching the way something slipped and surged under the flesh, some old rage coming back to the dead light. "What have you to answer to my riddle?"

"Hypocrisy," said Hela, the sound of her voice eerily calm. "Just that."

Death smoothed the folds of her long dress, fine brown hands laid on her knees, and she watched Hela. Waiting for the porcelain to smash to pieces, waiting without saying if it was the 'right' answer or not.

"Hypocrisy," said Hela again, as if the problem might have been that Death hadn't heard her. She stared down at the stoic, silent figure, looking for the reaction that wasn't coming. Silence hung between them, another dead figure on a noose, stretching, waiting, unchanging. "Do you hear my answer, Death?"

"I heard you," said Death, and her voice was pure calm.

"That's all you've to say to me?"

Death looked into Hela's glittering green eyes, seeing the way they flashed. Bright and alive, like the flecks of mica in her palm. And she said nothing, and she kept saying nothing as Hela's breath began to shallow, the hyperventilation of someone about to frenzy. She only waited, ceaseless and eternally patient. When Death chose to be.

"You sit there on the stones of this dead world and tell me scant tales of lives you chose to live, where death comes as a _mercy_, alongside hope, alongside some form of gentleness and you say you _learned_ from these, that change has some miraculous value, that your _empathy_ taught you to care about such brief lives that you send on into the void." The words in a monotone that belied the rasping breath under them, a true rage kept barely controlled.

"You _dare_ tell me this after I must tell you for your _game_ what death has been in my life, a shadow that's been with me since I was small, the ghost of what my family should have been, you took from us a child, our poor Baldur, a _baby_ that should have been king, and instead left _me_ behind to carry his lifeless future, a future that Odin couldn't possibly bear with me on the throne. I've had to become what you won't speak of, the Death of War, the monster of the battlefield, to prove my place when the place should never have been meant for me.

"You _dare_ talk to me about change when I _never_ had a chance, I was born to force myself into another's shape, and you sit there and judge me when I have been what you won't talk about and yet also still are - the men in the machines, thrown to the grinder, the ones that choked to death on a dying world, the ones that saw fit to worship your words carelessly lost and follow you for the darkness that lays in your wake. You sit there and act like all this is no part of the _lessons_ you come to share with me today."

Hela's voice had been rising, rising, not a shriek, but the controlled fury of a long-waiting storm. "You sit there and suggest _change_ is what I wanted all along, but how could I have possibly ever known, when all I had was limned by the boundaries of _you_, how can I seek what I never knew existed? You know what I wanted, Mistress Death? I wanted _understanding_, I wanted to be heard for who I was, to find some crack where I could shape myself, to have the freedom of a wolf pup born in some alien wilderness.

"But I can have none of this, I am an exile on a dead world for the things I did, the things I never believed I had a choice in, for I was Hela, someday Queen of Asgard, and its power lived in me. I am part of it, that part Odin All-Father wanted to change and didn't know how, so he hid it all instead when the blood I spilled for his kingdom cooled to black. I fought for the Asgard that was, because I knew no other way to be. I was what Asgard made of me. His two sons, those poor bastards, I saw them in scant glimpses and knew they lived, and you come to me and say they found change. Bully for them! They had the chances I never did! A living king who could not ruin them entire, and here I am, forever I learn, trapped with the ghost of my dead brother. Even my father's death will not free me now."

Death watched Hela fall apart, the cracks under her skin now shattered wide, and her face remained calm. Without judgment.

"You want my answer to your riddle? Gods, I'll tell you it. Not just hypocrisy you're here carrying, but a false hope. You speak of change, but what irony it is that you come carrying it as some great flag, some beacon. You, _you_, for when you come there's no more change save the way the light fades in our corpsed eye. Death is where change _ends_, and there's no more hope for that given life. Irony, hypocrisy, the end of it all. A door that shuts behind each of us, with no more _hopes_ to pray for."

"Hela," said Death, her voice becoming kind. "You are not dead yet."

Hela stopped her fury and looked at the girl, her eyes widening in shock at the obviousness of the words. Then she burst into bitter laughter. "But I am _here_, and I will never leave."

"Would you tell your father some of what you told me? Would you speak to him, accuse him, instead of lash your swords, of the pain your life carried, that you felt no other way to be but Asgard's weapon?"

Hela's laughter didn't stop, wild now, and not a little desperate. "As if he would listen to me."

"He might try now. He is old, and fading, and his changes have taught him to understand the gravity of his great mistakes. That much of the pain of Asgard today comes back to him, and though responsibility is a heavy thing all must carry, so much of it started with his choices." Death cocked her head. "You don't need his forgiveness, nor must you forgive him. I am not the fool that would suggest that. But some understanding, _that_ is the crux of that change the living seek."

"I say again, I am _here_, and I will never leave."

"Poor Hela. You needed one in your family that could hear your cries. Frigga missed so much of your spirit in her grief, and Odin spent his hours wrestling with his kingdom's identity in the wake of an all-father that would never be. Your brothers are no part of your life, and me? I _am_ a poor sister, a shadow that can seldom do more than offer haunts and whispers. I was not there, and yet I was _always_ there, as part of you. As that violent, bloody part of your wars, just as you accuse, and I was the usher of the deaths you parceled out, for you knew no other life and threw yourself deeper into it to cope. To hide. Since you would have no understanding, nor way to change."

Hela looked away, and she sunk to the bone sands, her legs folding under her. Not a kneel. Even weary and near broken, she would never kneel. "You don't argue my charge."

"Of my hypocrisies? Say I understand your point of view." Death looked up at the grey, broken sky. "I am one of the universe's first immortals, and I will be its last. It is too small of me to say I might be so flawed as you suggest, for I am Death, and death is not bound to give all its answers, even to a corpse. But I have also learned such lessons as we've spoken, and sometimes I choose to use them. I understand, Hela. I have empathy, hard learned. And I would offer you mercy, equally gentle, and now, earned. I appreciate your answer, Hela. It was truthful, and _truth_ was the answer to my riddle. This was your truth. It cannot be denied, and mercy is my reward."

"Mercy," said Hela, empty and tired now after her rage. "What mercy can you give me in this place?"

"A chance to cling to, a moment to wait for. But not for long. Too long a wait is no friend to one who's waited this much already. This conversation will help open a door for you, for better you spill this rage you've carried onto one that has the time to hear and empathize. Next you'll have a little space to study the things you've said to me, things I know you've never said aloud, never dared to acknowledge. The cup's overflown and shattered. Now to rebuild. A time to scab a few of those wounds, for your sake and no one else's, and to steady yourself. To next say what you will, as you will, as you choose."

"And what moment is coming?" Hela eyed her, untrusting, exhausted, but curious again.

"Your youngest brother will come to you in need, Hela, him you tire of and think you hate. He's no fool, and the spear that binds you now will be gripped tightly in his hands to remind you both of the geas. The way you once gripped his youthful neck, and he will feel similar fear as he did then. You've been nothing more but a ghost and a secret to him, and Odin knows almost nothing of what you feel, so Loki will come to see the Hela That Was. But will you be the same Hela, or the one that understands herself a little bit better now, the one who knows that her life was as unjust to her as she was to others?"

"What will he seek?"

"Your help." Death watched Hela's expression shift, from distrust to surprise to almost painful hope. "Not only for his own sake, but for friends and family and for much more. For the universe, and for Asgard. It cannot be doubted that while your flaws are true and impossible to ignore, and neither can one doubt your loyalty to your home. It was mistaken in its shape, but it was true. You tried to do your best, with the broken tools you had been given, and he is one that knows the worth of a second chance when the first was gamed and lost under the weight of such a loaded die."

Second chance. Hela couldn't say the words aloud. She mouthed them instead, like they were from some lost language. When she did speak, it was masked with the same, familiar distrust. "And if I say I do not regret what I did? That I do not think I need such a thing?"

Death shrugged. "I judge less than you believe. You will make your own decisions in that regard, when you have more information in your hands. Help him or no, that is your next fateful choice. I do not make it a bargain, I only lay it plain. What you choose - willingly - in that hour, why you make such a choice, then, perhaps, you will begin to understand some of the grace I have learned over millennia. Listen to him. And then decide."

Hela frowned, considering what the future was going to bring her. A chance at fresh air, at an open sky, a chance to confront her father, her king, her maker. It was almost incomprehensible, not a miracle, perhaps, but some new curse. And the rage lurked, suggesting she tear free with that future chance, and become again what she had been - a Death of the Realms, a Queen bound for a monstrous throne.

Or someone else. A possibility, true. She resettled her legs, and her palms, dirty now as opportunistic sand settled into the creases of her skin, rubbed against the sleek, black dragonleather armor she always wore, and she mused. "You are right on one thing, at the very least. I will need time to think."

"Of course."

Hela looked up, her eyes narrowing. "You said this serves a debt of yours. To my brother, I presume. How does this conversation, this _truth_ suit that goal?"

Death smiled.

"Am I to become _your_ weapon? Is that it? You think I'll save a life who is owed by you and roundabout grant him this earned gift of yours?"

She shook her head and laughed. "No, Hela. I'm trying to save _your_s." Death caught Hela's uncomprehending stare and leaned forward. For the first time, Death reached out and gently touched Hela's face. "Because no one else has known how, I choose to open a door. Because my friend, yes, to whom I owe a debt, would like it, once he understood a little more of was laid bare in this conversation. And Hela, he _would_ understand you, if given a chance. If you choose to give him one. Because Asgard and the realms deserve a stranger, better future built upon a foundation Odin might never have imagined. Because together you could do better - but only if you choose. Because all life deserves a family - whether born to, or found."

"I don't understand."

"That's all right. In time, you will." Death let go of Hela's face, rising to her feet and glancing away. "I must move on. There's nothing else for us to speak of."

"There's eternity to speak of. A thousand questions will always linger."

"And all of them hidden behind a shut door. But not unkindly done." Death looked back at Hela, her face turning impish. "I've got to keep _some_ secrets, little sister."

"Some," said Hela, hearing what she had been called and furrowing her brow at it.

Death fished deep into the hidden folds of her dress, and came up with a small, black book. On it was a sigil that seemed to change shape as Hela watched, but it often came back to iterations of the same thing - a loop, and a trio of lines, like a figure stretching their arms wide to something unknown. An ankh, and not. She tossed it to Hela, who neatly snapped it out of the air. "There's a few notes in there you might find of use, if you care to search for them. And whether you do or no, it's also message to your brother, to say we spoke and that my word has vouched for yours. You can do with that what you like, too."

Hela turned the book over in her hands. It was unremarkable otherwise. No magic aura dressed it beyond the secret of its mark, no scent of blood or the dustiness of some old corpse. Just a smooth leather spine holding together impossibly thin sheafs of various material, from flexible metals to parchment. She opened it to a random page, and saw tiny script in languages that meant nothing to her eye. She flipped to another, and saw a different language that was almost familiar. "A risky lend to a hand like mine."

"Maybe."

"And what will I do with it when our part's done? Toss it to the skies?"

"Oh, it'll find its way to me again, I've no doubt, don't worry about that." Death adjusted her skirt again, and now she seemed cloaked by the growing dark that slipped across the dead desert plains, the edges of her hijab catching a stray breeze, making a hood that hid her features deep within. She looked back once to see Hela still studying her words, the script changing throughout aeons, always small and fine, and almost always speaking of some new mystery. "Most everything does, eventually."

Hela snapped her head up to see if the words were meant as another wry joke, and saw that she was again alone on the world she had once been named for. All to appease the dead that had come before, and might yet come again. Then she resettled herself on the sand, hungry for what the future might have waiting for her, and began to read.

. . .

Director Phil Coulson saw the shadow appear outside the clouded glass of his door just before it knocked lightly enough to tell him for certain who it was. He let the letter he'd re-read for the fourth time fall back into folded thirds, then tossed it onto his desk, as if it didn't matter and wasn't worthy of any notice. "Daisy?"

She poked her head in. "Party's just starting to get into full swing out here."

"I can hear it." He could, too. Someone had gotten at the sound system and decided instead of the usual corny Halloween fare, it was time for their Rob Zombie playlist. "What caused the cheer a little while ago?"

"_Apparently_," said Daisy in a cheerful way that suggested 'apparently' meant 'we all damn well know how and it involved Loki,' "Doctor Strange lost a bet or something so he decided to crash the show. He's taking balloon animal requests."

Phil laughed and shook his head.

"You okay in here?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Dunno." Daisy slipped the rest of the way into the room and crossed over to him, furrowing her brow in that thoughtful, sometimes uncomfortable way she had. For a second, her gaze stopped on the folded letter with its thick paper that suggested some Very Official document from somewhere inside the agency. Then it moved on until it came back to his face. "You seem a bit quiet today."

Phil shrugged, casual and offhanded. "Little tired, that's all. Change of season, probably got my allergies up."

"'Kay. May sent me to get your butt out there before some sort of weird drama happens. Loki's already in the corner insulting the Doc."

"That's not unusual."

"No, but I want to get him to finally tell the story of whatever the hell happened a few years ago, when he went out to that abandoned school." Daisy crossed her arms and slouched back a few inches, remembering. "It's _gotta_ be a good one, but he won't tell it if he and Strange start combat dancing all night."

Phil snorted and pushed himself back from his desk. He took a moment to get up, wondering if that was a trace of dizziness he felt, or just allergy fog, or just him being oversensitive and overaware of everything right now. He made himself stop focusing on it, his mind wanting to keep focus on the letter from SHIELD medical despite himself, before Daisy gave him another look. "Then we better listen to Agent May. There still candy left?"

"Dude. _Dude_." Daisy grinned and took his arm, an adopted daughter that got away with too much, because she could. "We still got dozens of full-size everything, and Wong sent, like, an industrial _pallet_ of Rice Krispie treats with Strange."

"PB ones?"

"Hell yeah, with chocolate drizzle like little cat faces." She led him out the door, and Phil chuckled at the delighted tone of her voice. "It's gonna be a great party."

"Especially once we get there," said Phil with a growing smile, and this time, he didn't look back. Only forward, to whatever time was left.

_~Fin_

. . .

"Death's a capricious thing, innit?" ~ Neil Gaiman, The Sandman

. . .

I had a lot going on in my system to work through. Thank you for putting up with it, next time out will be much lighter. And since I'll very likely still have one more Halloween to get through, I'm thinking cryptids.

Hela will, of course, return. Not in the next fic, but soon.

The next fic will explain exactly what was in Phil's letter, but the end of first arc of the Codex already gave a hint there. But for now, Phil is fine, and we're going to keep having some fun. I promise. Everyone earns their happy ending.

Baldur's fate was previously explained in An Ocean Deep and Cold, a child simply gone at a tragically young age. In real world myth, Baldur is another of Odin's sons, the one Loki sort of accidentally but mostly douchebaggingly murders with a spear of mistletoe. Before that, Baldur was beloved by all the gods, though like his father, he was a god of war and came well to it. In Marvel comics, he appears as Thor's half brother and vaguely follows the myth. And in the MCU, he seems to be gone entirely, with Hela as a secret sibling instead of the result of some complicated Lokean heritage. This is part of my headcanon about how that might work.

Mistress Death's stories are entirely made up. Kawans are an obscure Marvel race I picked off a list. Hela's stories are also my invention, although Fenris being a female wolf pup in this incarnation comes from an interview done with the SFX team that worked on Thor: Ragnarok.

Thank you for coming! I'll be giving NaNoWriMo a shot this year and taking a break through the holidays, so the Codex will return in, holy frick how is this real, 2020, with the promised story of what Nebula is up to.


End file.
